Innocent as Sin (6 page)

Victoria, B.C.
Friday
12:15
P.M. PST

R
and McCree looked around John Neto’s suite in disbelief. There were TV cameras, lights, a makeup artist, a hair stylist, a continuity person with a clipboard and a frown, the telegenic Brent Thomas with an earnest yet horrified expression on his face, and a black man with a steel-tipped forearm prosthesis talking about war atrocities.

Everything but a dancing pig.

He turned on Faroe. “You didn’t say anything about a media circus.”

“Interview, not a circus,” Faroe said. “
The World in One Hour
is high-class crap.”

“Quiet!” someone called out.

Quietly Rand raised a middle finger. Then he leaned close and murmured in Faroe’s ear. “Just thought I’d let you know—from what I’ve read so far, Kayla Shaw isn’t good for it.”

“Not a crook?”

“Not likely. Read between the lines of her dossier. Backpacked all over the world. Younger sister has a Ph.D. in tropical
diseases, married to a doctor, both working for Doctors without Borders. Close family until the parents died. Kayla doesn’t gamble, get drunk, do drugs, or hump along the casual sex circuit. Smart, middle-class, hardworking. Somehow Bertone twisted her. It’s how he does business.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Faroe said. “You keep in mind that most white-collar crooks don’t start out to end up felons.”

“You really think she’s a crook?” Rand asked.

“I’m partial to the Mexican justice system—guilty until proven innocent. Grace feels like you do, if it matters.”

Rand shrugged. Nothing mattered but getting close enough to Bertone to kill him.

But he really hated to see an innocent ground to bits by transnational criminals and governments that were rarely better than they had to be to survive.

“Take a break,” called someone.

Ted Martin hurried over to Faroe.

“Okay, is this him?” Martin asked, jerking a thumb at Rand. “The photog you told me about?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, but he’ll have to wait. We’re just getting into it with Neto. Awesome stuff. That pink half-arm on his plum-black body says it all.”

Rand stared at the man wearing jeans and a silk sweatshirt, rhapsodizing about a black man whose forearm had been hacked off with a machete and replaced by a white man’s prosthesis. Then Rand looked at Faroe and said, “I’ll wait until hell freezes solid.”

“Okay, can you at least comb him out before we put him on camera?” Martin asked over his shoulder as he hurried back to Neto. “I’ll send over Freddie. She could make a woolly mammoth look good.”

Faroe snickered.

Rand said something under his breath and ignored both men. He found an empty chair, booted up Faroe’s computer, and began reading. Neto’s interview made an odd counterpart to the dossiers that clicked by beneath Rand’s fingertips. The Scots-accented English that Neto spoke reminded Rand of his grandfather.

“How did you come to be in MI-5?” Thomas asked Neto.

“I was born in Africa, raised there long enough to see the beginnings of the troubles, back when the militias had only machetes.” He raised his artificial hand. “We escaped and made it to Scotland, Glasgow. Strange and wonderful people, the Scots. I came to love their bluntness and pragmatism. That is one of the reasons I sought out St. Kilda Consulting. The island of St. Kilda is—or was—to Scotland what Scotland was to the rest of England, a last frontier.”

“Have you met Ambassador Steele?” Thomas asked. “His grandfather was the last man to leave St. Kilda when the British forced evacuation of the population and turned the island into a bird sanctuary.”

“The ambassador and I have had several long conversations,” Neto said, “all in Scots Gaelic. He is one of the few people I have ever met who speaks the mother tongue.”

Rand paused in his reading. The world was a very odd place when a black man speaking Scots Gaelic—who was also a former British intelligence officer—was presently chief of intelligence of a small African country that was besieged by transnational criminals from Russia, Brazil, Europe, and the UAE. And this man was being interviewed for American TV in a room in British Columbia, Canada, about a murderous Siberian gunrunner presently living the high life of a socialite in Phoenix, Arizona.

Reed would have laughed his ass off.

Rand didn’t. A small world wasn’t necessarily a good thing, but it sure was real. Whining about it wouldn’t do anything except waste breath.

“It was during those conversations that the ambassador provided me with information about the man who is today known as Andre Bertone,” Neto said. “He is the one feeding arms to Uhuru rebels who want to unseat the established government of Camgeria. Thus far they have not been successful, though they have continued to try for many years.”

“What do the rebels want?” Thomas asked, keeping his face straight despite the inane question. This was a softball interview, designed to make the subject look good, not the reporter.

“What all barbarians want—conquest, blood, power, wealth. They would replace a thriving black democracy with a dictatorship of violence. All this in the name of righting tribal wrongs that go back hundreds and hundreds of years. I do not want our women and children to be raped and slaughtered in the name of old arguments or new genocides.”

“What are you doing to prevent it?”

Neto bowed slightly toward Thomas. “I speak to everyone who will listen about the greed and evil of arms dealers such as Andre Bertone.”

“The merchant of death.”

“Yes. He is the one who sold arms to the rebels five years ago. He, or his employees, seek to send hundreds of millions of American dollars in arms to the rebels today. The people funding the rebels are not Camgerians. They are not even Africans.”

“Who are they?” Thomas asked.

Rand didn’t need to hear the answer. It was all there in the files on Joe Faroe’s computer. He went back to looking at various pictures of Kayla Shaw. Driver’s license. Employee of the month. Yoga classes three times a week. Regular health-club workouts.
Horseback riding. Hiking. Passport up to date. Gave regularly to the SPCA. A stack of long-distance surveillance photos and a few shot so close to her that the photographer must have been within reach.

Probably Jimmy “Handsome” Hamm with a lapel camera,
Rand decided. He’d already read about the St. Kilda employee striking out in his attempts to get Kayla Shaw’s confidence.

If he can’t do it, why does Faroe’s wife think I can?

There wasn’t any answer in the photos. Good or bad, all the pictures showed a dark-haired, light-eyed young woman whose cheekbones suggested Scandinavian blood and whose smile was hard to resist. She wasn’t Hollywood gorgeous, but she had a kind of energy and intelligence that intrigued him.

“…talking about a huge amount of money,” Thomas said.

“Over two hundred and twenty-five million dollars American,” Neto agreed.

Rand whistled silently and looked up from the computer. Faroe hadn’t been real definite about the money involved.

“Where would rebels find that kind of cash?” Thomas asked.

“Barter, not cash.” Neto leaned back in his chair and massaged his right forearm just above the prosthesis.

“With what?”

“Blood diamonds, stolen oil, coltan—”

“What is coltan?” Thomas asked.

Rand went back to reading. Unlike the future TV audience, Rand already knew more than he wanted to about the “black stone” that was the basis of modern electronics.

Yet he couldn’t help listening to the events that had caused his brother’s death.

“Coltan is mucked out of the ground by independent miners, rebels, and men with legitimate Camgerian licenses,” Neto said. “There was a time in the 1980s and 1990s when coltan was worth
nearly as much as solid native copper and was much easier to find. The rebels who confronted the Camgerian government five years ago used coltan to finance the purchase of arms. They bartered sacks full of it for AK-47s.”

Rand saw the words as a series of pictures, vivid as only a flashback could be.

Bulging gunny sacks lined up along the dirt runway.

Sweating black rebels unloading wooden crates of high-tech death.

A Russian turboprop.

The Siberian.

Blood.

Reed’s blood.

Everywhere.

“The guns were stolen or purchased in Eastern Europe, from Soviet, Bulgarian, and Ukrainian arms depots,” Neto said. “Then they were flown south to equatorial Africa and traded for coltan, which could be easily monetized in the world market.”

“Monetized?” Thomas asked right on cue.

“Sweat and blood and coltan turned into hard currency,” Neto explained. “Victor Krout, now called Andre Bertone, was one of the leading forces in this illegal trade. He used his ties to the Russian military-industrial establishment to organize what had been random smuggling into a coordinated, very profitable business. I estimate he made one hundred and fifty million dollars over the ten years he was active in the illegal arms trade. Much of that money was wrung from the blood and bones of Camgerians. I will get it back on their behalf. With that money we will dig village wells and vaccinate children, build schools and clinics and hospitals. For millions of Camgerians, that money is the difference between continuing stability and the atrocities of war.”

“Can you retrieve that money legally, under international law?” Thomas asked.

Rand’s mouth flattened. If international law worked reliably, St. Kilda would be out of business. Transnational criminals weren’t stupid. Bertone was nothing short of brilliant. Courtroom proof was hard to find when everyone who stepped forward was murdered.

And that was what Krout/Bertone did.

“Yes, we will prevail,” Neto said, “but it will be difficult. Bertone, as he is known today, has long since put his disreputable past behind him. Using money gained from bringing war where peace had been, he has become a very wealthy oil broker, a middleman between renegade African regimes and rebel armies on one side and some of the world’s leading oil companies on the other. Bertone has a whole list of former arms clients who are tied to him—rebels who used his weapons to overthrow governments and governments who used Bertone’s arms to suppress rebellions.”

“You’re saying that money, rather than any kind of idealism or politics, motivated Bertone in the arms trade,” Thomas said.

“Idealism?” Neto laughed bitterly. “Bertone could not find it in the dictionary. Yet, or perhaps because of that, he has many powerful allies in Africa, Russia, Brazil, France, and even the United States. That is why you had to come to Canada to talk to me. My request for a U.S. visa was turned down.”

Rand waited for the next, obvious question: Why would the U.S. refuse Neto entrance?

Instead, Thomas went back to the sexier, safer, far more visual subject of arms, diamonds, oil, and violence. Rand could practically see the montage of film clips that would be used to help the viewer understand that Bertone’s profits could be measured in suffering as well as dollars.

Faroe gestured to Rand.

Rand closed the computer and walked to the suite’s small
dining area, where a portable fax had been set up. “Scrambled?” he asked Faroe softly.

“What do you think?”

“Like eggs at a buffet.”

Faroe looked at his watch. The fax began spitting out papers. He handed them to Rand and waited for the explosion.

“Application accepted?” Rand asked in a rising voice. “Invitation included? Frigging parking permit? You mean there really is such a dumb-ass thing as the Fast Draw?”

“Sure is. And now you’re a part of it. Come on. Grace is waiting for us in Phoenix. She has more papers for you to sign.”

“What?”

“Employment contract.”

Rand shook his head sharply. “If my word isn’t good enough—”

“Your protection as well as ours,” Faroe cut in. “If you’re employed, you can claim confidentiality if the feds question you.”

“Try it again, in English.”

“I knew you’d ask, so I had her write it down.” Faroe reached into a hip pocket and drew out a file card the size of his palm. “She said, and I quote, ‘American law gives us some cover on the basis of trade secrecy, but only if Rand signs an employee confidentiality contract. Otherwise he would have no plausible basis for refusing to answer FBI questions.’”

Rand blinked. “Was that English?”

“Good as it gets. The original thing was two pages long.”

Rand looked at the St. Kilda Consulting contract and read quickly. His only comment was, “‘Employed for a time to be mutually agreed upon.’”

“That’s my Grace.” Faroe handed the other man a pen.

For a moment Rand hesitated, remembering Reed’s bloody death and the smiling life of Kayla Shaw. He hadn’t been able to save Reed. Maybe he could help her.

More likely not.

Rand took the pen anyway.

“Welcome back,” Faroe said.

“Tell me that in a few days.”

Faroe took the signed contract and nodded to a woman who had been waiting across the room. Freddie walked toward them briskly, scissors and comb in hand.

Grinning, Faroe did a fast fade.

Phoenix
Friday
7:10
P.M. MST

I
mpatiently Bertone tapped his fingers against his polished desk. Joao Fouquette might demand that everyone jump through hoops for him, but he took forever to answer his private satellite phone. Knowing the Brazilian’s lifestyle, he was probably enjoying a long, leisurely meal with his mistress and was reluctant to focus on business.

Finally Fouquette answered, his voice rough, almost breathless. “Speak.”

“The account has been set up at our Aruban bank.”

“It took long enough.”

“It went more quickly than you had any right to expect, and you know it,” Bertone said.

In the background Bertone heard a woman’s voice say, “Joao, my soul, you promised me no business. It is my name day.”

“I’ve sent all the information to your coded e-mail,” Bertone said over the sound of Fouquette soothing his mistress.

“Expect the transfers within forty-eight hours,” Fouquette said almost absently.

“But of course,” Bertone said. “I’ve alerted the men to begin gathering the cargo at the Ukrainian warehouse. When the full payment is transferred, the cargo will be flown immediately to Camgeria.”

“Joao,” said a pouting voice. “I am cold without you.”

Fouquette broke the satellite connection.

Bertone set the unit aside, picked up a scrambled cell phone, and punched speed dial. Gabriel answered immediately.

“All is well?” Bertone asked.

“Ver’ quiet. She visit a taqueria and now drives back to her little ranch. Such a hot woman need a man.”

“Business first.”

Gabriel sighed. “
Sí.
It is a long time I wait.”

“Death is a lot longer. Keep it in your pants until I give you the signal.”

“And if she goes sideways on you?”

“Bring her to me immediately.”

“Alive?”

“If possible. If not, stupidity is a capital crime.”